Postcard Exchange Network

We have all seen those posts on social media, telling us that children aren’t born with any prejudices, they learn them. Postcards For Peace has come up with a plan to change that; we want to create a network of schools around the world who believe in teaching our future generations about respect and tolerance of different cultures and religions.

The idea is simple. The children get to learn about peace/non-violence and about a different country and it’s people, in a fun and exciting way. We could use email and the internet to do this but where is the fun in that? It won’t engage children like pencils or paint will. We want them to create something more tangible.

The plan is to pair up schools, registered to our network, in very different parts of the world. One of them will design and write postcards and send them to the other school who will then create their own postcards and send them back.

We love the idea of a child in one country being able to hold a piece of work that has been crafted by the hands of another child thousands of miles away. They might treasure it for life, hide it away in a box to discover decades later, or hide it under their pillow. They will always have that memory of that time they learned about a different country and spent hours working on a postcard and sending it away to another child only to get one back a few weeks later. It will be that memory that could make a difference, that could turn them into future change makers.

We started to build a network of schools in the Spring of 2015 and now have over forty signed up from the UK, USA, Canada, Greece, New Zealand, Iceland, Russia, Lebanon, India, Togo, Mexico and Taiwan. The amount of schools signing up has increased dramatically since August and we are currently in discussions to sign up schools in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The schools already registered are keen to start soon and with funding we are hoping to commence the project at the end of 2015 or early 2016. A trial version is starting shortly between a school in Australia and a refugee school in Lebanon. This will be funded by the Australian school.

At the start of the project, each school will be sent an email containing a PDF postcard template and details of their partner schools. We will try to partner schools as diverse as possible and will listen to any special requests.

“We are very excited to participate in this project and be part of your Postcard Exchange network.”Colegio San Patricio, Mexico

“The school is very excited to be a part of this initiative and look forward to being partnered with a school for the Postcard Exchange Network.”
Head of Primary, British School of Lomé, Togo

“The kids were very excited about your program when I introduced it to them yesterday.”
Art Instructor, James B. Sanderlin World School, Florida, USA

Please register your details in the form below if you would like to take part and we will be in touch as soon as we believe we have found a suitable partnering school.

UPDATE: The above map was updated on 25th September 2015. We now have schools participating from USA, UK, Greece, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon, Russia, Iceland, Taiwan, Togo and India. We are also in talks with schools in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Please tell us if you have any preferences to which continents or countries you would like to find a partnering school. Use this box to also tell us anything else you think would be of interest to this postcard exchange program.